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Do Websites Help To Combat Identity Theft Or Inadvertently Encourage It?A really interesting question, is whether websites like this one, combat-identity-theft, help or hinder the fight against this type of crime. There is a reason behind asking this question other than some melancholc introspection. This site isn't the biggest in the world and isn't even the biggest about the subject of identity theft prevention. However, it does get enough traffic each day, week and month to offer some insight into web users behaviour. For those that do not know, website builders can check many, many aspects of site performance. The nature of the internet means that almost everything can be monitored somehow. One of the things that can be assessed is how visitors arrive at a site. Do they search in a search engine? If so, which one? And what words did they enter to find the site? In other words, what were they really looking for? Some of the recent searches that seem to have appeared - through summer 2007 - are for keywords that the site does not target but may do well at unintentionally. For example, 'easy identity theft' or 'how to commit identity theft'. For a site which aims to 'combat identity theft', it wasn't really part of the plan to encourage it. But that may be the case. Honestly, who knows? On the one hand, ID fraud is something of a black art about which little is known by the population at large. This unwitting ignorance is why the crime is so successful. Therefore, a very goodcase can be made that more information needs to be in the public domain to help raise awareness of the steps that can be taken to assist prevention. However, on the other hand, raising awareness also highlights the difficulties of catching identity thieves, the potential profits available and the ease with which many of these crimes can be committed. A double-edged sword if you will. Here is the catch 22 dilemma. Highlighting the potential danger people face from these types of crime can also highlight it as a potential 'career choice' to unscrupulous wannabe criminals. It is a little like 'a bank job' without the mask, shotgun and getaway car. Of course, whilst discussing this point is important, it relates to all other websites - be they privately or government owned - the print and television media and authors penning true crime books. By exposing the amazing degree of ingenuity that some criminals display, it highlights to other less creative types potential scams. Despite it all, we at combat-identity-theft.com are convinced that this is a fight worth fighting and that doing all we can to raise awareness and protect the innocent is well worth doing. So we shall continue. We just hope that we don't add to the problem. We discuss some of the factors relating to
online identity theft
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